The New Glutton Or Epicure

By Horace Fletcher

This antiquarian book contains a treatise on human nutrition, being Horace Fletcher's monograph on 'The New Glutton or Epicure'. This fascinating text will appeal to readers with an interest in the history and development of nutritional study, and will be of special value to collectors of vintage literature of this ilk. The chapters of this book include: 'The Personal ''Case'' and ''Endorsement'' of Dr. Ernst Van Someren', 'Experiments upon Human Nutrition', 'Military-Scientific Cooperation', 'Dr. Kellogg's Appreciation', 'Extracts from Dr. Edward Hooker Dewey', 'An Agreeable Endurance Test', 'Edward W. Redfield's Evidence', 'The Mind Power-Plant', etcetera. Horace Fletcher (1849 - 1919) was an American nutritionist famously referred to as ''The Great Masticator" because of his claim that food should be chewed one-hundred times before being swallowed. We are republishing this vintage book now in an affordable, modern edition complete with a new prefatory biography of the author.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Read Books Ltd.
• Release date: Apr 26, 2013
• ISBN: 9781473383449

Book preview

SERIES

THE NEW

GLUTTON OR EPICURE

It is now five years since the first section of this crude little announcement of a great physiological discovery was published; and while the author has spent all the intervening years in unremitting study of the subject of which it treats, with the heads of many of the great physiological laboratories of the world assisting him with their best facilities and information, as to the reasons for things, there is but small correction to make.

This does not imply that the last word upon the subject has been herein stated, or that corrections may not be made as the study progresses, but it means, that as an honest description of an effort to get to understand the natural requirements in our own nutrition, it is perhaps better put than the same author could now do; that is, if intended for the enlightenment of persons whose curiosity has not yet been excited, or whose interest in their nutritive welfare is still young and inexperienced.

With regard to the statement that whatever has no taste is not nutritious, copied from a high educational authority, correction certainly must be made. Pure proteid has no perceptible taste as measured by taste-bud appreciation, any more than pure water has specific taste, and yet who may not say that water tastes good when one is really thirsty. Taste is a very subtle sense and is closely allied to feeling. Things are often said to taste good because they feel good in the mouth or to the throat as they descend to the stomach.

Regarding also the advice to remove from the mouth refractory substance that the teeth and saliva cannot reduce to a condition to excite the Swallowing Impulse. There is theoretical and actual nutriment in the cottony fibre of tough lobster, or poor fish, or lean pork, and there is good reason to believe that a strong digestive apparatus can take care of such tough substance after a fashion and get nutriment out of it. In the same way the hard, woody fibre of old nuts is the identical material that was rich in juicy oils and proteid when the nuts were fresh, but if swallowed in the toughened condition that age brings to nuts, it is but slowly reduced in the stomach and intestines and only at enormous expense. If putrifactive bacterial decomposition has to be resorted to to get rid of the stuff the process is then poisonous as well as difficult.

According to physiological authority which we must, for the moment, accept, proteid is a vitally-necessary material and we cannot afford to waste it. Our life depends upon proteid to replace the waste of muscular tissue which occurs with every movement, but when even good proteid is found by the mouth to be in a form that is too refractory for the teeth to handle, it is poor policy to send it on to the toothless stomach and intestines for the accomplishment of the reduction. If the mouth cannot handle what its guardian senses don’t like, it can spit it out and get rid of it immediately; but if the stomach or intestines are afflicted with something that is harder than they can easily take care of, they have to call in the assistance of bacterial scavengers whose method is poisonous decomposition, and whose fee is putridity of odour penetrating the whole system and issuing at every pore, making Cologne water a large commodity even in so-called Polite Society.

There are discernible in the mouth distinct senses of discrimination against substance that is undesirable for the system. If the mouth senses are permitted to express an opinion, their am tipathy is easily read. It is far safer to spit out what the natural impulse of swallowing hesitates at, or fails to suck up with avidity, than it is to force a swallowing to get rid of it simply to satisfy a prudish table manner objection. To avoid impolite condemnation we really make hogs of ourselves on the sly, and vulgar slang alone is appropriate to express the shameful confession.

As a matter of fact, if one faithfully practise mouth thoroughness in connection with all his food for a term of a few weeks, he will find that the appetite ceases to invite the sort of things that have to be spit out. The appetite gradually but unfailingly inclines to foods that are profitable all the way through, and in which there is little or no waste. This revelation alone shows a delicate usefulness of Appetite that has escaped students of the human senses.

In the matter of the insalivation of liquids, evidence continues to accumulate to show that in the present prevalence of liquid or soft foods lies the great danger to the digestive economy of man. Through them, mouth work becomes neglected, and the tendency is to force the stomach and intestines to take on the work of the powerful mouth muscles and glands in addition to their own work, and in the straining that ensues trouble begins.

There is now no doubt but that taste is evidence of a chemical process going on that should not be interrupted or transferred to the interior of the body. Tried upon milk for so long a period as seventeen days, during which nothing was taken but milk, not even water, thorough insalivation secured more than a twenty-five per cent economy in actual assimilation; not alone with one subject, but with no less than five persons, living on milk from the same cow, and all of whose strict test history was recorded. It seems also to be the only way in which a practically odourless solid excreta is obtainable, and this is certainly evidence worth considering and a desideratum worth striving for.

While it is an excellent thing to give thorough mouth attention to anything taken into the body, to solids alone, even if liquids are neglected, the best economic and cleanly results are only obtained when all substances, both liquid and solid, are either munched or tasted out of existence, as it were, and have been absorbed into a waiting and willing body; a body with an earned appetite.

With liquids one simply has to do as the wine-tasters and the tea-tasters do. Small sips are intaken and the liquid is tasted between the top of the tongue (the spoon end) and the roof of the mouth until all the taste is tasted out of it, and the Swallowing Impulse has claimed it. This is by no means a disagreeable task, and as soon as the unnaturally acquired habit of greed and impatience is conquered, the reward of following this natural requirement is very great and increases with practice. Five years of experience has taught the author that a really keen appreciation of taste and its delicacy of possible refinement is not known to persons of ordinary habits of life. The pleasure which comes with conformity with the natural requirements is truly Epicurean and disregard of them is as surely gluttonous.

The author still claims discovery of a distinct physiological function which he first named Nature’s Food Filter. Van Someren preferred the name of a New Reflex of Deglutition. It is, in fact, the Natural Swallowing Impulse, invited only by food mechanically and chemically prepared for passing on to the interior, call it by whatever name you like or may.

At the time this little book was first published, the only note in favour of giving special attention to buccal digestion, that had been sounded, was the advice of Mr. Gladstone to his children, Chew your food thirty-two times to each mouthful, or words to that effect. The Masticate well prescription of the physician when given at all, had meant little or nothing, to either the patient or to the prescriber, except that one must not swallow hard food whole.

For two years after its publication little heed was given to the suggestion because the author happened not to be a medical man, but, finally, the reserve of indifference was broken, first by Dr. Joseph Blumfeld, in a review of the book in the London Lancet, and soon after by Dr. Ernest Van Someren of Venice, Italy, an English physician residing and practising in Venice. Dr. Van Someren’s interest and experience are best stated in his own words, as follows:

THE PERSONAL CASE AND

ENDORSEMENT

OF

DR. ERNEST VAN SOMEREN

AN

ENGLISH PHYSICIAN AND SURGEON, PRACTISING

IN VENICE, ITALY

"MY DEAR MR. FLETCHER:

"It would be almost àpropos three years ago; since when I have used no other.’ I say ‘almost àpropos’ advisedly, for, while the soap claims to keep the outer man clean, the practice of your principles justly claims to keep the inner man sweet and clean, so lessening the need to cleanse the outer man!

"A well-known English surgeon (I think Sir Wm. Mitchell Banks) recommends physicians and surgeons to take a leaf from the book of patent-medicine vendors, and make their patients testify to their successful treatment. I will take the hint and give you, as my ‘doctor,’ a testimonial of how personally I am benefited by your advice.

"Three years ago, when I first met you, though under thirty years of age, and myself a practising physician and surgeon, I was suffering from gout, and had been under the régime of a London specialist for the treatment of that malady. Though vigorously adhering to the prescribed diet, I suffered from time to time. My symptoms were typical—paroxysmal pain in my right great toe and in the last joints of both little fingers, the right one being tumefied with the well-known ‘node.’ From time to time, generally once a month, I suffered from incapacitating headaches. Frequent colds, boils on the neck and face, chronic eczema of the toes, and frequent acid dyspepsia were other and painful signs that the life I was leading was not a healthy one. Yet I was accounted a healthy person by my friends, and was, withal, athletic. I fenced an hour daily, took calisthenic exercises every morning, forcing myself to do them, and I rowed when I obtained leisure to do so. In spite of this exercise and an inherent love of fresh air, which kept all the windows of my house open throughout the year, I suffered as above. Worse still, I was losing interest in life and in my work.

"In one or two conversations you laid down your simple principles of economic nutrition. You told me that my food ought to be masticated thoroughly, until taste was eliminated, and that (my) liquid nourishment, if taken, ought to be similarly treated. You also told me that, taking food in this way, I might, without fear of consequences, give free rein to my appetite. To shorten my story, I’ll say that in three months after the practice of these principles my symptoms had disappeared. Not only had my interest in my life and work returned, but my whole point of view had changed, and I found a pleasure in both living and working that was a constant surprise to me. For this, my dear Mr. Fletcher, I can never repay you. My only desire has been and is, to try and do for others in my practice what you did for me.

"Now I have since that time had occasional colds, headaches, and gouty pains; but, whereas formerly I could not explain their causes, I can now invariably trace them to carelessness in the buccal digestion of my food, and can soon shake them off. So much for my testimonial. Now for other matters.

"I do not know what may be the extent of the claims you are advancing in regard to the benefits accruing from the practice of your principles. If you, as you in justice may, claim even the widest benefits as surely following the practice of these principles, many will relegate these claims to the limbo where all such ‘panaceas’ are soon forgotten. They will err greatly if they do so. The seemingly simple procedure of insalivating one’s food most carefully is not calculated to impress people with the fact that great permanent benefit follows. The subtlety of the changes that occur is due to the greatly increased action of a vital process, i. e., of the admixture with the food-stuffs of saliva, in such quantities as to alter the chemical reaction of the initial stage of digestion. This initial change causes a consequent change of all the processes following it, and a change also in the final products of the entire process of digestion; the greatest change being, perhaps, the elimination of last-resort digestion by the intestinal flora (digestion by decomposition caused by bacteria), and consequent elimination from the body, of the toxins they produce. The life of an organism has been defined as ‘the sum of all those inter-actions which take place between the various cells constituting the organism and their several environments.’ (Harry Campbell.) The final products of digestion are absorbed into the blood stream, and go to form part of the ‘several environments’ of the cells. The individual cell, the various groups of specialised cells, such as the brain, nerves, muscles, bones, etc., in short, the whole organism is beneficially influenced and made more resistent to disease by the purity of a blood stream that no longer contains the toxins of bacterially digested food.

"The further investigation of your discovery by those competent will, I am confident, result in such a simplification of the rules for a healthy life that the medical profession, at present forced by a lack of knowledge of the vital processes of nutrition to base their treatment on the veriest empiricism, will then be able to teach all and sundry how to live. At present, all we can do is to treat and perchance cure for a time certain symptoms, allowing the patient to return afterwards to a mode of life that is really responsible for his malady. ‘Disease is an abnormal mode of life.’ (Harry Campbell.) The three factors in its causation are:

"(a) Cell structure.

"(b) Internal cell environment.

"(c) External body environment.

"Heredity determines, to a very large extent, our cell structure, and consequently our body structure.

"Sanitary science regulates our external body environment as much as the artificial and noxious habits of so-called civilisation will allow. The mental and physical external body environments have also their effect on the organism.

"Your discovery of simple rules for an Economic Nutrition will control the internal cell environment. In doing this, the predisposition to disease is materially affected. The internal cell environment being free from toxic material, and the cell itself better nourished, the cell’s resistance to disease is increased, the possible source of disease being limited to the external body environment.

"In concluding this endorsement I can promise, to each and all who may intelligently practise the principles of Thorough Buccal-Digestion, a complete knowledge of their body’s food requirements, or, as a patient of mine tersely put it, they will learn the way to ‘run their own machines.’

"Yours ever,

ERNEST VAN SOMEREN.

Dr. Van Someren and the author, assisted by Dr. Professor Leonardi, of Venice,